It’s basically a crystal ball from tolkiens works- they can be used to communicate or show different times/places, but they’re not really reliable. (Edit: they’re also specifically vulnerable to being manipulated and used to selectively show misleading but true things if they fall into the hands of very powerful wizards, and Sauron’s use of them has been broadly compared to wartime propaganda, which is actually especially relevant for the type of data mining they do.)

The unreliability is a reason not to name your company after them, but I don’t know if people would be as surprised by the names “crystal ball“ or “scrying pool” or other unreliable magical methods of seeing things.

[–] Drusas@fedia.io 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Thank you!

[–] idiomaddict@lemmy.world 1 points 3 weeks ago

Of course! It did also just occur to me that they’re also specifically vulnerable to being manipulated and used to selectively show misleading but true things if they fall into the hands of very powerful wizards, and Sauron’s use of them has been broadly compared to wartime propaganda, which is actually especially relevant for the type of data mining palantir does.